2008 Noida double murder case: Nupur and Rajesh Talwar were accused of killing Aarushi.
Highlights
- Rajesh, Nupur Talwar cleared of daughter's murder in 2008
- Allahabad High Court says lower court judge had 'aberrated'
- Suspicion, however grave, cannot take place of proof, says court
Exonerating Rajesh and Nupur Talwar of their teen daughter Aarushi's murder in 2008 by overruling an earlier verdict, the Allahabad High Court has scathingly likened a lower court judge to a "math teacher" and a "film director trying to thrust coherence into scattered facts". The judge who had declared the Talwars guilty in 2015 had "aberrated", declares the High Court ruling.
"The learned trial Judge cannot act like a math teacher who is solving a mathematical question by analogy after taking certain figure for granted... Like a film Director, the trial judge has tried to thrust coherence amongst facts inalienably scattered here and there but not giving any coherence to the idea as to what in fact happened," the judgement says.
Rajesh and Nupur Talwar have been in prison since 2013 over the murder of their daughter Aarushi Talwar.
The Talwars will walk out of jail today, four years after they were arrested for the killing of Aarushi and their domestic help Hemraj at their apartment in Noida near Delhi - a case that came to be India's biggest whodunit.
Aarushi, 13, was found with her throat slit in her bedroom; Hemraj was the main suspect till his body was found hours later on the roof of the apartment. The trial court convicted the Talwars based on circumstantial evidence.
The High Court says the CBI had failed to prove beyond doubt that the Talwars had killed their daughter and the conclusion drawn by the lower court judge was "illegal and vitiated" as it didn't consider the evidence on record.
"Suspicion, however grave it may be, cannot take the place of proof," the two judges stated. "Two views are possible, one pointing to guilt of appellants, other to their innocence. We propose to adopt the view favourable to (Talwars)."
Aarushi Talwar was found dead in her bedroom in May 2008.
They also believed "the possibility of the presence of other persons and the outsiders... having access to the apartment on the fateful night cannot be ruled out."
The CBI, said the judges, "has miserably failed to lead any evidence which may even remotely suggest that Hemraj was murdered in the bedroom of Aarushi and then his dead body was wrapped in a bed sheet and dragged from Aarushi's bedroom up to the terrace."
They demolished the CBI's theory that the Talwars had hidden Hemraj's body on the terrace of their flat as "patently absurd and improbable".
In another stinging view of the trial court judge, the judgement notes that he "has tried to give live and colourful description" of the incident.